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Saturday, June 9, 2012

North Carolina, the beginning of a beautiful journey...

The last time Jack and I spent any time in Pennsylvania, we took a drive along Skyline Drive in the Shenandoah Mountains. It was beautiful, but at that time of the year, many places were closed, and we vowed that we would some day come back and do the "whole thing", drive the Blue Ridge Parkway all the way. Now, a decade later, we are following up on that dream! This time, however, we would travel south to north. For us, it would begin in Ashville North Carolina.

Ashville had more things to "see & do" than we had time or desire. The "big draw" there, is the Biltmore Estate. At $64 pp to tour the estate, we passed. Instead, we spent our time venturing around downtown. We ended up in their River Arts District, located in turn-of-the-century buildings. Both of us love "local art", especially when we can meet the artist, as we did with Jonas Gerard. I fell in love with his vibrant use of color, so couldn't resist a small landscape on ceramic tile. We saw such fun & unique works done by these various artist, it made it a wonderful way to spend the day.

A quick visit to the Blue Ridge National Heritage Area (visitor's center) to find out what special areas we should look for, towns to stop in, etc. We learned about the music of the Ridge, called The Crooked Road. We decided we would do our best to stop at as many "locations" that held music jams, concerts & performances as we could.

Maps, booklets and brochures in hand, we were ready to journey through this lush green forest and blue mountains of the Blue Ridge Parkway!

If you wish to view the rest of the photos from this trip, you can at my Flickr account at:http://www.flickr.com/photos/74905158@N04/

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2019- A NEW YEAR, A NEW JOURNEY

At the start of our grand adventure...

We can hardly believe it's now year seven for Jack and I, in our quest to "see the USA" in our 36' Tiffin Allegro Motorhome.

It all started in January, 2012, after retiring from the printing industry (Jack) and the San Diego Zoo (Marie). We sold our Escondido (California) home, put our remaining treasures in storage, bought the motorhome of our dreams (a 2008 little used beauty) and set out to see all that we could see!

Our only goal was to "follow the sun" as neither one of us are big fans of cold weather, especially driving in snow. Our first destination was to head slightly east towards friends. Several years ago we had a number of our friends who had abandoned the work-a-day-world in favor of a full-time RV life, two couples that had done that, now were living in Nevada, & Arizona and we wanted not only to see them, but to learn as much as we could from them!

With little more than their wonderful sage advise, we soon set off for the adventure of our life. We loved every moment of it; so much so, we are now going forth with year seven!

If you followed along with us during our first years, welcome to year seven, and thanks, as it's nice to have company (be sure to say "hi" sometimes)! If you are new to the blog, "welcome" and I hope you enjoy the trip.

You would think that after all these years, we'd "seen it all"...but no, we haven't! This is a beautiful country and we never get tired of discovering it. Every back road leads to a new and wonderful adventure! We finally have "crossed off" all the lower 48 states, but that doesn't mean there are no surprises left, no new campsites to explore, no new parks to visit and favorite spots to see once again!

We changed our "status" this year, in that we went from "being on the road full-time" to "being on the road part-time"...but the adventure is still the same!